Good morning.
I want to thank the committee for the opportunity to speak about a subject that is important to me individually, important to CPAA—which I'll call “the association” in my remarks—and important to all people living in rural Canada.
The association represents more than 8,500 employees at Canada Post. I can say with pride that we only represent employees working in the corporation's rural offices. Our members work in nearly 3,000 post offices. Those offices range from small operations in people's homes, to general stores and municipal buildings, to larger operations in larger towns.
Many of the post offices are in extremely remote communities, including fly-in and boat-in locations. A significant number of our members supply the premises for the post office, largely at their own cost, and receive a small leasing allowance for doing so.
CPAA was formed a little over three decades after Confederation, in 1902. At that time, rural post offices were the centre and lifeblood of rural communities. The same is true today. Many Canadians living in urban locations take postal and other delivery services for granted. In rural Canada, the options for sending and receiving necessities of life are much more limited.
At no time was this more clear than during the COVID pandemic. During those most challenging times, the ability to get food, medication and other essentials in thousands of communities was completely dependent on Canada Post's rural offices. Workers went in to CPAA post offices day after day and week after week, understanding that they were putting their health and perhaps their lives in serious jeopardy.
They were doing so because they were considered by the government, by their employer and by their communities to be performing an essential service. It may have taken a pandemic for some Canadians to understand the importance of a post office, but most people outside of big cities already knew the central place that post offices and postal services hold.
Post offices allow businesses to reach out to the world from remote areas. They allow local operations to grow. They prevent migration out of smaller communities by offering residents in rural Canada access to services and goods. Even in the age of the Internet, they allow federal, provincial and municipal governments to communicate with residents in those rural communities.
In rural Canada, Canada Post has the ability to help those communities grow. We have been spearheading initiatives to offer more services and more diverse ones. This includes using those offices as financial service hubs. Postal banking was a service that our post offices offered during much of the last century. Some banks moved in and have recently decided they are not willing to invest in those services or those communities. Canada Post has started offering them again on a small scale. We believe that so much more is possible.
A post office is also an affirmation of our commitment to one another as citizens of Canada. From Old Perlican, Newfoundland, to Bella Coola, British Columbia, and from Kugluktuk, Nunavut, to Bromont, Quebec, the Canadian flag on each post office is a sign that Canada respects and serves all, no matter where they live.
We should also remember Canada's commitment to indigenous communities. Many, if not most, are in rural and remote communities in Canada. The need to ensure access to the complete range of postal services and facilities in those communities is part of Canada's fundamental obligation. Canada Post recognizes this obligation as part of its commitment to an indigenous and northern reconciliation strategy.
I worked in CPAA post offices in Alberta before I took on my responsibilities with the association. There, and in every CPAA office that I have visited, I have seen first-hand the dedication that our members in rural Canada bring to their work. They do so because they understand the importance of what they do. They do it for their neighbours and they do it for their families, for farmers and for small business owners. Through these people and through other people, they do it for all Canadians.
For decades, the association has been resisting the efforts of Canada Post to reduce services to rural Canada. In the nineties, we worked with other organizations to help people understand what was at stake if rural Canadians were stripped of their basic services. We received a promise from the federal government that there would be a moratorium on office closures. Even with the moratorium, Canada Post has closed hundreds of offices over the past 15 years.
We are worried that we are at risk of returning to those difficult times. Our members have had their working hours cut to the barest minimum needed to get the job done or below that.
In the absence of a will to support rural Canada, we worry that post office closures and cuts in service may now be back on the table. We are sure the committee understands the importance of maintaining postal services to all Canadians. The association urges the government and each of the federal parties to ensure rural Canadians can continue to live in security and dignity and receive the levels of postal service that will allow them to continue to participate fully in Canadian society.
I am passionate about these issues, because I understand the need for rural post offices and the services they provide, as well as the importance of those services in the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of Canadians.
Thank you.